By: Dianne Post
“I’m sending an update from Minneapolis to ask you for your continued support and vigilance.”
On the one hand, we are delighted to see Greg Bovino and his little coat leave in disgrace. We are gratified to see that the tide of public opinion and mainstream news media seems to be turning toward the truth. We are anxious to see what will come out of the federal courts attempting to reign in DHS’ tactics. We are proud of the show of solidarity that 100,000 of us marching through downtown Minneapolis in lethal temperatures gave to the world. We are happy that our weather has showed up and showed out to support us in this effort – but I’m sorry for the spillover to those of you who aren’t in states who deal with this regularly! I’m proud of Governor Walz, and I’m even proud of our Commissioner of Corrections, who gave a masterclass in a recent press conference debunking claims that Minnesota is not obeying immigration laws.
I’m proud of my neighbors. We have never been more resolved. Some of us are even getting cool loon tattoos!
Yesterday I attended a constitutional observer training at a local church – there were over 500 attendees. Our nonprofits and churches are hosting multiple trainings each week – it’s taken this long for me to go through the training because they have all been full before I got a chance to register! I highly recommend attending a training even if ICE isn’t in your community yet.
On the other hand, I need you to hear that they have not slowed down. Recently, the Pentagon approved DHS’ request to allow use of Fort Snelling here in the metro as a staging and logistics site for immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities. We have also heard that they are extending their contracts with local hotels through May. This implies that a build-out, rather than a pulling back, of ICE presence is on the table. We think this means that under increased scrutiny they may use tactics that are less outrageous and more palatable to Americans, so it’s more important than ever that you know what’s really going on.
We still have over 2,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents in our state. They still outnumber our local police. In some cases, small town local police have had to step in to stop them from abducting American citizens without cause. They are still pepper spraying protestors without provocation, they are still dragging people from their cars. In northern MN, they sat down to eat at a restaurant and then arrested the owners and staff when they finished their meal. They arrest and attack veterans. They are busting down doors in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs without warrants. They are in Bemidji, Rochester, and everywhere in between. A large number of the children enrolled at our elementary school continue to attend classes from home due to well-founded fear. They say they have a list of the “worst of the worst” but continue to use racial profiling, intimidation, and total disregard for the law as a way to make their quotas. When they tell you how many arrests have been made, you must examine the evidence that supports that number. In Minnesota they are claiming credit for violent offenders who were arrested, tried and sentenced here in our state system while ICE was “too busy” to pick them up from holding.
Last week, 10 minutes before classes began, I received an alert in our neighborhood rapid response chat that ICE was parked at the Dairy Queen across the street from my children’s school. After the parent watch made sure they knew we knew they were there (with whistles and car horns) they left, but not before getting out of their vehicle and posturing menacingly. After they left the school, they went straight to a Spanish immersion childcare center about 5 minutes away. It would be easy to assume they’re after parents and teachers, but after 5 year old Liam Ramos was used as bait and then abducted from his home to be placed in a hellhole institution in Texas, and the abduction of a 2 year old little girl, we know that ICE does not exempt our children from their reign of terror. Unfortunately, our children are well aware of that fact too. Whistles will be a trigger for anyone who has lived through this time in Minneapolis. Today they have been spotted in multiple places within walking distance of my home.
I am so grateful that Liam is back home with his family. It truly takes an enormous weight off my heart. But, there are somewhere around 1,800 other children like Liam (and some are even younger!) who are in the same “Family” detention center he and his father were in. Two more children from Liam’s school have been taken since he and his father were taken into custody. I encourage you to read the accounts of Liam’s time there as told by Joaquin Castro and others – we are better than this as a nation.
ICE is showing up to the large protests trying to blend in (they’re not subtle – picture the wolf dressed up like Grandma in Little Red Riding Hood). Agitators are infiltrating our Signal chats and even our weekly prayer meetings and posting them online to dox us. They say this must have been years in the making, and evidence of “the deep state”. The lack of understanding of what we are dealing with here and how we are responding is almost unimaginable to us. Yes, we have experience organizing and supporting less privileged neighbors after George Floyd. But the idea that this is anything but personal for the people of Minnesota is so cold and calculating that it stuns me. This is personal for all of us. There is no boss, no central authority issuing commands. We are organizing in precisely the same way that we would if a neighbor or parishioner had a family crisis and needed deliveries of soup and help shoveling their sidewalk, just on a larger scale. We know they want us to turn violent, and we know that we will win because we’re not going to play their game their way. We know how to take care of each other because that’s how we survive here.
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Please continue to put pressure on your elected officials to put an end to this occupation of Minnesota and to hold the line on withholding additional funds for DHS to fund ICE’s campaign against our constitution and democratic norms. Please continue to provide what financial support you can. Please support efforts to improve conditions in detainment centers and ultimately to see that the detainees are released. Please connect with your neighbors so that you’re ready when this comes to your doorstep. Minneapolis will be with you. And, for those of you who are living this or any version of this (Portland, Maine, D.C., North Carolina, New York, California, Florida and more) we see you and we are with you.
Minnesota families and business have been through enough. Our state understands the rule of law and respects it – it’s ICE that doesn’t. This campaign has been intended to terrorize, demoralize and divide from the beginning. We don’t need a new small man in a different coat. We are well aware of who Tom Boman really is. We can’t afford to wait while the government “trains” their “agents” or while an “investigation” takes place. We need this to end now. ICE OUT of our communities, now. www.standwithminnesota.com Thank you.”
Since this, ICE has detained a 16-year-old legal refugee and used her for bait to force the family to pick her up so they could all be arrested and sent to TX. They did not come. She spent the night in a hotel room with two female agents. And got an attorney.
I read the 46-page transcript in Segundo v. Bondi et al in Minnesota, where on Feb. 3, Judge Blackwell questioned the U.S. attorney Ms. Le about the failure of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to follow court orders and release people when he had ordered it. She was the one who said please hold me in contempt so I can get a nights sleep and “this job sucks” and was promptly fired. So she can get a good night’s sleep now.
Reading that, one has to be utterly shocked at the level of incompetence in DOJ. No one knows what they are doing. No training, no direction, no rules, no chain of command, no answers. Complete chaos. This is what DOGE and Voldemort have brought us. A 6th grader could run the country better.
“What made you think you didn’t have to fight for our freedom?” In a webinar on Feb. 10 about Hidden Histories of Rebellion in the U.S., Maria Ester Hammack, PhD, Assistant professor of African American History at Ohio State University said her elders told her generation that when they were young. It applies to today’s kids from high school on up. It applies to you. It’s a fight that never stops. We cannot slow down. We can never give up. As of this moment, Congress has not funded ICE past tomorrow. CALL YOUR TWO SENATORS AND CONGRESSPERSON RIGHT NOW AND TELL THEM TO VOTE NO. DEFUND ICE.
